Streaming soars, but album sales and overall music consumption down in 2014

A pack of Nashville musicians are among the top-selling artists year-to-date, but overall music consumption, which includes sales and streaming, is down 3.3 percent for the first six months of 2014 compared to last year, according to a new report from Nielsen.

The decrease is driven in part by tumbling album sales, which fell 14.9 percent compared to last year. Year-to-date in 2014, 120.9 million albums have been sold. Of those albums, 62.9 million were on CDs and 53.8 million were digital album sales, down from 60.8 million in the first half of 2013. Digital track sales fell 13 percent to 593.6 million.

Vinyl album sales and on-demand streaming remain the biggest gainers, increasing 40.4 percent and 42 percent, respectively. Audio streaming was up 50.1 percent and video streaming was up 35.2 percent. In total, streaming surpassed 70 billion songs in the first half of 2014, compared to 49.5 billion in the same period last year.